sorry to threadjack but Newegg.com is having a sale on all otterbox cell phone casings.

I checked the Defender for iphone, Bao. It's 29.99. The same price my last four were. Maybe the other models may be cheaper, but it appears a typical "jack the price up and then take it off to create an imaginary bargain".
Mine came from ebay and amazon.

My neighbor is a computer wiz and unlocked his Iphone and uses it on T=Mobile and is always offering to do stuff to mine, but I tell him to stay away as I like it like it is.

Just got the Otterbox defender off Ebay for 32 bucks shipped as opposed to the 60 they are charging in the Att&T store.

I have guys at work who won't use Iphones due to their complaints about how it runs certain business apps that I don't know about or use.

For me, it's cool and keeps me all nice and organized and that's worth the price.

The one for the Eris is only $10 though! Thanks Bao!:-)

Actually the HD2 will get WinMo7. Whether your carrier will do it is another thing. But HTC will be doing an upgrade. And as far as WinMo7 is concerned I have used it and it seems very bloated. Maybe once the custom roms come out it will be better. As for 6.5 put SPB Mobile Shell on it and it is awesome. That said if you are not comfortable putting custom roms or overlay programs on your phone, any WinMo phone is probably not a good idea. What makes them the best IMO is the huge amount of customization available from the community of users.

I stand corrected, but agree with you on the carrier holding updates back.

I ran SPB Mobile Shell, Manilla 2D, Titanium, Sense UI, you name it. Still doesn't change the fact that underneath that sweet looking UI is laggy, buggy Windows Mobile. I've flashed custom ROMs, lite ROMs, leaked ROMs, hacked ROMs and landed on one I really liked until I realized that the build the chef baked off of was "time-bombed" to quit on May 1 2010. Finally I gave up.:-)

My Eris should be here today. :-) It will be weird not installing those handful of programs Ive been using for 2 years. I just have to hold out until the Incredible specs are confirmed then I will decide between that and the N1.

I agree.
I had a WinMo phone before the iPhone. It was slow and sluggish to the point it pissed me off. That's when I switched to the iPhone. I was much happier.
I wasn't willing to put a custom ROM on it, but from what I heard that was the answer to it being so slow.

I used winmo for as long as I could stand it. I know everyone likes to compare winmo to iphone, but they aren't anything remotely alike. I can only imagine how windows 7 on a phone will suck, but I'll reserve my opinion until I actually put win7 in my hands.
I've considered jailbreaking my iphone, but I have yet to find a reason to do it. My iphone is more of a toy than a tool to me. I don't rely on it for business, I use my desktop for that, and just use my iphone to augment my desktop in a pinch.
I am definately looking forward to playing with the droid just so I can see what it does in case I can make use of it. So far I have never found a smartphone that does anything well. At least anything I need.
I take that back. I have found a bunch that hang when multitasking, slog through any decent amount of data, and make me want to pull my hair out. :-)
It's been almost a year since I've previewed any smartphones, I'd like to find something new to b!tch about. :-)

Absolutely. At this point, Jobs could take an iCrap in a bag and the Apple faithful would fight for the chance to own it.
Posted via Mobile Device

I would agree with this statement regarding Droid and Win7 based phones, but not regarding Blackberry. Of all the current smart phones on the market, BB is the least functional and is the only one I'd classify as a one trick pony. In fact I'd classify it as borderline obsolete and it will soon be a dying pony if RIM doesn't pull on their innovation panties and come up with a new device in very short order. Despite being essentially nothing more than an email enabled PDA, the BB has survived, basically unchanged, as the defacto smart phone for business applications since it was launched almost a decade ago for two simple reasons:

1) BES integration into MS Exchange
2) corporate inertia towards large scale changes

BB is only just starting to break into the consumer space, and is most failing against the iPhone (and now the Droid's) simply because as a platform it's too focused on business productivity. Since it's introduction it's been basically a glorified Palm Pilot that does over-the-air email/calendar/contacts sync'ing, everything else a smart phone does is a kludge or a hack or both on a BB....... and "everything else" is something which most non-business users care about on at least an equal footing with with email and calendar (probably more). Until RIM manages to innovate a new non-business consumer orientated phone they won't get significant market penetration outside their core area of strength, the corporate enterprise market.

Retaining the corporate market is going to become a major concern for RIM because of one technology: ActiveSync. A true push email/calendar/contacts integration system used to be the sole domain of BES, and it was that mechanism alone that made the BB the ubiquitous corporate device that it currently is. However now that ActiveSync is embedded in Exchange, and included in your Exchange licensing costs unlike BES which is a pricey add-on, it's child's play to set up a true push sync with any iPhone, Droid or Win7 phone. No longer are you tied to a BB if you want your corporate email/calendar/contact, and all the recent survey's I've seen have indicated roughly 7 of 10 current BB users are planning to switch to an iPhone or Droid when their current phone contract expires. When 70% of your customer base is saying they want to switch from your product at their next opportunity, you'd be well advised as a company to sit up and pay attention!

The iPhone, Droid and Win7 phones all have FAR better, more usable interface and RIM's attempt to implement a similar device (the Storm) were not well received because the accuracy of the touch screen was horrible. Similarly finding apps for a Blackberry, surfing the web, etc. are all extremely painful on a BB. While there are certainly hundreds of thousands of meaningless and trival apps for the iPhone there are still hundreds, if not thousands, of really good apps as well. The same be be the case with the Droid once there's been enough time for developers to build unique apps.

Rep for Imagery.

I've tried the Droid and had a Blackberry for a while but they don't compare to what I can do with my iPhone 3gs (it's the only Apple product I've ever tried). It would be tough for me to go back to using another smart phone at this point.

I'd love to hear what you can do on your iPhone that cannot be done on a Droid/BB that would make you so loyal?

\
:-) Ok, that almost got the coffee all over the screen. Sadly though, I work with 2 that you note sounds exactly as if you know them. :-)

Every product has it's fanboi's, the more niche the product the more rabid and insular (and loud) they tend to be. That's even more so when you're dealing with a company like Apple who's products tend to be highly (read: over) priced fashion accessories/statements for some of their customer base.

Don't get me wrong, Mac is a fabulous OS and if you're a graphics, photography, video or design professional there's nothing better on the market today. However if, like most people, you use your computer primarily for email/web/documents/looking at pictures/watching video, any Windows or Linux based PC can do just as good a job for 50% or less the total cost. For many people that choose Mac, the extra cost simply doesn't matter that much. They're happy to pay the premium for their chosen platform and quietly go on doing their thing, just as most Windows and Linux users do.

For a small subset though they have to try to justify their purchase in their own mind and that expresses itself in the stereotypical "RAH RAH RAH, Mac is so much better than everything else. RAH RAH RAH!!" fanboi-ism that's become associated with Apple people. You see the same thing in the Linux world, just with the cool factor that Mac has replaced by a geek factor. Rarely do you see it with Windows, but that's just because it's hard to get that passionate about something which is the defacto standard and on 95% of the machines out there.

As a IT type this has been a great thread to follow and I've learned a good bit. You summed it up so well in this statement spot on. People who turn a blind eye to their favorite (pick any item here) scare me. Nothing is perfect. At times on the other hand, they do provide me with many hours of amusement in reading the flame wars at times. Today though, it's been nice to see that hasn't happened here. Lot's of good discussion on pro and cons of many phones I have not had a chance to use.

Indeed.

I'd agree, also as an IT type :-) I'm on the server/infrastructure side for a large health authority. We used to be an exclusively Blackberry shop but just recently opened up ActiveSync to iPhone's, basically because of pressure from our users. No Droid's allowed yet, but I'm sure that'll come once enough exec's or doctor's start demanding it. In the last 6 month's we've received maybe 3 or 4 requests to add a Blackberry to the system, everything has been either iPhone or Droid. I personally just ditched my Blackberry in favour of an iPhone (the only Apple product I'll use) because I couldn't stand the limitations of the BB platform anymore. I probably would have gone Droid instead if it'd been an option for syncing with Exchange but c'est la vie.

I'm an old school Palm fan, but I think Droid will end up being the big winner in the smartphone space. WinMo flat out sucks, iPhone forces you to accept too much proprietary bs, RIM/Blackberry has their annual server outages... Palm's WebOS was a nice effort, but I think it was too little, too late. I read an uncomfirmed report on Engadget Mobile (IIRC) that they are now looking at Droid as well.
Posted via Mobile Device

Thats really now irrelevant, they are slowing the update cycle for android. The revisions on the OS are much slower now then they were with 1.0 - 1.6.


If I was looking for a phone I'd look for one that has the features NOW, rather then wait for an update.

I've had the G1 since Day 1 and have been playing with it, ROMS, UIs, and SPLS and I know the average person doesn't want to deal with that. It's not fun, i even bricked my phone once.
I'd like to believe that but the sad truth is that it's not. Windows wont allow the phone to have for something along the lines of having too many keys or not a dedicated bing search key.
Very lame, BUT xda-developers will come through with a work around, just don't expect official support.